Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Two Fun and Easy Science Experiments

For science today we played with baking soda and vinegar. I find that my boys never tire of any experiment having to do with baking soda and vinegar!

First I gave them a tin of baking soda, a few cups of colored vinegar (white vinegar with food coloring added to it), a few cups of colored water, and a medicine dropper each.

They used droppers to drop colors into the baking soda and see what happened.

I gave Ian and Alec a blank sheet of paper and a pencil and told them to write down anything they learned or observed that seemed important to this science experiment.

They quickly realized the colored vinegar made the baking soda bubble where the colored water made tunnels.

Evan thought that perhaps it was how high or how low you dropped the vinegar and water that determined if it bubbled or not so we experimented with that and found out it's not the height of the drop.

The boys then tried adding vinegar to the water to see what happens when you mix them and then add them to the baking soda. They were surprised to find it still makes bubbles.

They put their hands in and mixed the containers all around. Ian thought it felt a bit like goop (cornstarch and water mixture). They all agreed the baking soda felt totally different than it did when they started.

Once we exhausted that activity we went on to a second science experiment using baking soda and vinegar to help blog up a balloon.

To begin this simple experiment we needed balloons, an empty water bottle, baking soda, vinegar, and a funnel.

We put vinegar in the bottom of our water bottle; just filling it up an inch or two. We then used the funnel to get some baking soda into our balloon.

Making sure to keep the baking soda in the pocket of the deflated balloon we stretched the neck of the balloon over the bottle and once we knew it was firmly attached to the bottle we let the baking soda fall into the vinegar.

With the chemical reaction of the baking soda and vinegar; the balloon fills with the gas and fills up the balloon.

We talked about why that worked, whether or not the balloons would float. We then pulled the balloons off and tied them up. They don't float. They're filled with carbon dioxide; the same gas we give off when we blow up a balloon.

They had fun playing with them until they popped and left baking soda behind. It was a great fun science morning. We ended up eating a pretty late lunch because they were having so much fun experimenting they didn't want to stop!